Graphic artist and publishing designer for movie poster

Problem:

Create a movie poster for Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Solution:

The first thing I thought of for this project was to list the different symbols of Dracula. Dracula is a vampire represented by bats, fangs, a long cloak, a castle, and an eerie setting. After I had a few ideas for symbolism, I looked at other posters and artists that use symbolism within films and books. An artist I immediately loved and took inspiration from was Olly Moss because he utilized negative space effectively and used a lot of symbolism in his work. I also noticed that many of his works have a color scheme that uses reds, oranges, and tans which I thought was perfect because Dracula is often red and black colors.

When creating this poster I put all of the text elements on the poster first to see how much room I would have for artwork. Once I had my text roughly placed, I started sketching. I started with the main bat because I wanted the negative space between the wings to look like fangs. After that, I measured the bat, took it into Photoshop, and started to input all my other vectors such as the trees, castle, moon, and bats into the silhouette. After that, I brought it back to the poster, finalized the text’s alignment, and was finished.

The main challenge I faced during the project was that I had to learn how to use smart objects in Photoshop seamlessly to create the setting in the bat. Now I use smart objects in Photoshop whenever I can to make quick, easy, and safe adjustments.

Programs:

Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign